Category: Rants & Rambles
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Exactly how much work is a half-assed job?
If you tend to work smarter, not harder, you may at some point in your life have been accused of doing a half-assed job. But what, exactly, does that mean? How much work are you doing? How much energy are you putting into it?
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Solved: Use Roku TV (Class Select Series 4K Smart TV) without internet access
We begin today with a rant on the cancer on society that is hardware-as-a-service and forced obsolescence, in a time when terms like “climate crisis” are casually bantered about on the evening news… possibly as a diversion to avoid talking about actual cancer, but that’s neither here nor there :-( Anyway, what you came for:…
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Buying Parts
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Comcast, she’s at it again…
comcast, corporates, drivebydownload, broken, tos, contracts
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Cloud Computing…cirrusly? (same trash, different bag)
So, apparently I’m not the only one to notice the mid-level marketing types in IT having a big collective nut lately about “Cloud Computing”. This week even the Wall Street Journal ragged about this nonsense on the front page. For those who don’t spend their time around mid-level IT marketing types, cloud computing is… well,…
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Cypherpunk’s Wet Dream meta-entry
I once said that this blog would eventually reach a point where any possible entry could be expressed as a sum of references to previous entries. In this case, it’s this one, this one and this one. I have maintained that a point will be reached where plain old ordinary Web sites will be forced…
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Some stuff on Paypal
I’ve been using Paypal as the payment-handling service for my trance vibe project, and overall it’s not too bad. I can even print my own postage for domestic shipments, sticky on a label and not have to drive to the post office to send out an order anymore. But there are a few things about…
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Fixing Dell Precision T3400 USB not working
This is an update to a previous rant about the mysterious Windows XP “Dee-Dunk” error (and the novel concept of presenting an “error message” when an error condition exists), possibly in conjunction with broken or intermittent USB functionality. This post is mainly for Googlers – my friends are more than welcome to skip it. I…
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Daily Windows Rant
Error messages, people. Error messages. When an “error” occurs, it should be accompanied by an “error message”, which informs the user a) that an error did occur; b) what that error was. It does not even necessarily have to be understandable to mere mortals (although this would be really nice), because understanding it is the…
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Comcastic!
So, Friday morning I’m doing some prep for our Cape Cod camping trip online, and I notice a Comcast truck parked in front of the neighbor’s house, and the Comcast guy putting a ladder up against the telephone pole. I go to take a leak, and when I get back, the truck is gone, and…
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smallfish@tech
So yeah, that particular work project just keeps getting better. Today I got this in my email from the manufacturer of a critical component, reaffirming my personal “If it’s not in-stock on Digikey, I do not specify it in my design” policy. […] The <display> is on hold. There are no technical reasons but it…
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Bank of America(R) Doesn’t Like your Lifestyle
Via LJ::pervygeekfancy Geek dating site opens, accepts most comers, including all gay/bi/lez/mixed/poly preferences which are somewhat heavily represented in geekdom. Bank of America(R) signs on as merchant account support. Bank of America(R) isn’t cool with poly. Poly users get their profiles kicked off the dating site with a polite, but unambiguous letter essentially saying, “our…
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Bloody hack!
So, for those (if any) who found several pages of visible Viagra links at the end of the last few posts, my apologies. A vulnerability in the version of WordPress I was running allowed a machine at keymachine.de [87.118.124.3] to directly inject spam links into posts using the attach/edit features. (This site is apparently a…
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Encryption: Not just against the bad guys anymore! (or, how Comcast contributes to global warming)
In Part 1, we explored evidence supporting the conclusion that Comcast’s well-known policy of blocking / interfering with p2p file transfers (notably BitTorrent protocol) extends to several other legitimate moderate- to high-bandwidth activities, including collaboration via Lotus Notes, remote desktop applications, FTP, and even sending emails with large attachments. A working temporary solution (again, while…
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On nomenclature (Soylent Green is… is..)
Ok, so, apparently in certain circles of defense parlance, you do not blow up people. Well, you do, but the correct euphemism is “soft targets” (as opposed to “hard targets”, such as tanks, buildings, etc.). Referring to soft targets as people is rather frowned upon. I managed to inadvertently silence a getting-out-of-hand meeting yesterday as…
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LiveJournal Strike? (Don’t back-down, back-up!)
Today, I logged into LJ (that drug I joined because All my Friends were Doing It), and found out that: a) As of yesterday (or some other near-term time), free accounts have been discontinued (new users join as Sponsored or Paid accounts) b) As of about-same-time, some unspecified changes to “Acceptable Content” policies, with the…
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Spinlock This: Less productive than reading slashdot all day! Film at 11.
1) Dude. Seriously. The display we’ll be designing into our gadget won’t be ready for 6 more months? You said it was ready a week ago, and that was two months ago. Our customer is crawling up my ass for the prototype we promised them in December. So you gave me this other one and…
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Take my money, please!
I mean it, guys, want money from me in exchange for services I’ve agreed to? All you have to do is ask. So apparently, if you ever dare to log into GMAC Mortgage’s web site and pay a bill “on-line” (using teh interwebs), even just once, they stop billing you. Neat, huh? Subprime house in…
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Salesdouche game for a bored day
Today was one of those little icky days where, after the fun and mildly arty process of designing a set of boards, the next step was to spend all day in Excel sourcing parts and getting all their prices filled in (and ripping up parts of the design where the part had gone non-stock, etc.).…
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Woo Vista
I just had my first taste of Windows Vista, uninstalling the mountains of craplets pre-installed on a co-worker’s new HP laptop. Renaming a shortcut on the desktop required clicking “ok” to two authorization dialogs. ‘Nuff said.